221–230 of 356 posts
Many of the comments in this thread do not understand the concept of free speech from a legal perspective. Free speech does not mean that you have the right to say or distribute whatever you want on whatever platform, owned by a private corporation you want. on a side note - these are super dog whistle comments, and I'm surprised the mods are ok with them.
Censor desires censorship. We're shocked!
Sigh, more politics intermingled with doing business. Just provide a service and leave it be.
I agree in some respects. I see more and more of this in the company I work for (and its peers) to the point where it's getting a bit overwhelming. I often wonder if we actually even care about building a good product anymore, or if the mission has changed to social justice initiatives. Not to say I'm against them, but it's slightly concerning that pockets of social media outrage is having such a pronounced impact.
Many of the comments in this thread do not understand the concept of free speech from a legal perspective. Free speech does not mean that you have the right to say or distribute whatever you want on whatever platform, owned by a private corporation you want. on a side note - these are super dog whistle comments, and I'm surprised the mods are ok with them.
>Free speech does not mean that you have the right to say or distribute whatever you want on whatever platform, owned by a private corporation you want. Most people understand this. It doesn't need to keep being repeated in every thread. Facebook isn't bobsmessageboard.com. The debate is over whether it is a de facto public communications utility and should be regulated as such, or if it is private company that is fr…
If Google can’t compete with them - then SocialSite5000 startup has no shot in hell.
Facebook is unfortunately a monopoly. We can wait it out, but they are in a position to keep their advantage for generations so I don’t think that’s entirely reasonable.
If there are a monopoly, then they should be held to the ideals of common carrier and free speech and platform vs publisher, etc.
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It's a perfectly valid comment to people who want to get rid of "hate speech" but say nothing about the popularity of gangsta rap within this same crowd. I never understood this.
People are going to assume that you're bringing this up as a trope of culture war and race war, and I'm doubtful that they would be particularly wrong to assume that. That makes it flamebait, which is against the site guidelines. Please don't post like that to HN.
> Private company tells other private company which speech they should be censoring Welcome to the new era of information folks. You thought private companies were too powerful before, well, guess what? You've now given them the power to control almost all forms of communication. "But, but, private companies should be able to decide who they want on their platform! What about the free market?" Wake the hell up. Read…
It seems like all of the alternatives to the censored platforms, are naturally majority populated by the right.
This polarizing effect squeezes out any productive centrist discussion or debate.
We want Facebook to censor speech on Facebook! But oh not all speech just some speech that we don’t like. Only we are allowed to define the type of speech we don’t like. And we reserve the right to change at any time. So, please just censor speech that we don’t like. On this day. At this hour. At this minute. And next minute we’ll tell you what to censor next.
That's a good start! But what we really want is for Facebook to go out of business.
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You seem to be confusing small businesses with corporations, as if they have the same economic and power imperatives.
There's no difference except size. Facebook and Google were small businesses once.
That if you took Apple, Google, Facebook and started them today under appropriately matches circumstances... they would all either be purchased for meager amounts or put out of business.
I believe in free markets, but also monopoly wrangling. FAANG will absolutely work against the very landscapes they came up in.
Many of the comments in this thread do not understand the concept of free speech from a legal perspective. Free speech does not mean that you have the right to say or distribute whatever you want on whatever platform, owned by a private corporation you want. on a side note - these are super dog whistle comments, and I'm surprised the mods are ok with them.
Inciting violence is illegal speech. Facebook is giving the president a platform for his illegal speech. The courts (and the senate) are not going to enforce the law, so as a society we are duty bound to take whatever legal actions we can to correct the situation.
So, you're inciting violence? I do enjoy irony, but hypocrisy is quite different.
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Outrage Mob Rules of Social Media Engagement: 1. Any and all views expressed in opposition those currently deemed acceptable by The Mob must be censored, and an outrage/cancel campaign may be waged against any view holders 2. In the event views are partially or mostly aligned with The Mob, but said views are misinterpreted so as to be sufficiently in opposition to The Mob (deliberately or not), Mob reserves its right…
Small correction, It's not any view deemed acceptable . It's any view not deemed properly righteous. For any not displaying the correct righteousness will be deemed to have not just the views they expose, must also be hiding views deemed reprehensible.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Powerless#Hav...
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Why is it impossible that Verizon is responding, at least in part, to public pressure against Facebook?
I suspect you might not get an answer to this since it's not something anyone has actually said here.
Root Comment: "Sounds like Verizon's Facebook advertising spend is losing value because of COVID-19, so they're using this a way to redirect focus away from the negative impact on their business."
Parent Comment: "Why is it impossible that Verizon is responding, at least in part, to public pressure against Facebook?"
Your Comment: "I suspect you might not get an answer to this since it's not something anyone has actually said here."
I read this the way the parent commenter read it as well: everyone is explicitly avoiding the notion that Verizon may be doing this because they feel like that is best for their public image. What I can't tell is if you're asserting that no one will answer because everyone is coming up with other ideas that seem to avoid the obvious, or if you think the parent commenter is asking a baseless question.